The Tibetan word Bardo means literally "intermediate state" - also translated as "transitional state" or "in-between state" or "liminal state".
Surfing is a surface water sport in which a person (the surfer) rides a board (the surfboard) on the crest of a wave as it carries the surfer towards the shore.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Miles per human

At first, the ‘new’ fuel source seemed to be a godsend. I can remember the first time I became introduced to it years ago by my friend Steve. We were driving down PCH and I remember commenting on how the car’s emissions seemed to smell a bit like donuts. Steve laughed and then said “You’re sharp. I’ve been experimenting using human fat as the fuel source. So far it seems to be working pretty well.”

I took a deep breath in and examined the curiously sweet aroma of human fat burning which might have inspired my next question: “So. How many miles per human?”

Steve looked at me with a blank face. I explained: “How much fat do you get from the average human and then how many miles do you get per human.”

I remember Steve’s aghast expression: lips pressed together and eye brows scrunched together. We did not talk much the rest of the day. I remember being a bit perplexed, normally Steve appreciated my incredibly callous wit. In retrospect, I wonder how much he knew back then about what could happen when enough people become addicted to human fat as its main energy source.

Oh, it all started innocently enough, liposuction techniques became greatly refined and soon, folks could just wear a special shirt to suck up the fat. It even reached the point where we could just plug into the ‘fat shirt’ we were wearing and power the blender, the vacuum, whatever.

Things started to get interesting when the special shirts became dirt cheap to manufacture. The fat epidemic disappeared and the world became filled with emaciated monkeys driving around in tiny shiny cars.

Even without oil, war needed to continue and it became a whole lot more sinister when the human fat shortages hit in 2040. Militaries were redeployed to areas where human populations had sky rocketed. Giant arenas were built as human reservoirs. India, China and Africa became the new OPEC. Who could have guessed that corporations would be having bidding wars with each other over ownership of refugee camps located in the middle of Africa?